Description
The man who photographed the vanishing West. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis — Timothy Egan’s National Book Award-winning biography — tells the extraordinary story of the Seattle photographer who spent thirty years documenting Native American life in 40,000 photographs and twenty monumental volumes.
Curtis’s obsession bankrupted him, cost him his marriage and his health, and produced The North American Indian — one of the great documentary achievements in history, equal parts artistry and elegy for cultures under siege. Egan neither romanticizes nor condemns: he shows the staged portraits and the genuine respect, the salvage-ethnography mindset of the era and the real human relationships behind the lens, in prose as vivid as the photographs themselves.
Sweeping and deeply moving, this is essential American history — the story of a man who tried to hold back time with a camera, and partly, magnificently, succeeded against impossible odds.
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis
Introduction to Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis is the acclaimed biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Timothy Egan. A New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, it tells the extraordinary story of Edward Curtis, the photographer who devoted his life to documenting the disappearing world of Native American tribes.
The Man Who Captured a Vanishing World
At the turn of the 20th century, Edward Curtis embarked on an obsessive, decades-long quest to photograph and record the cultures of more than eighty Native American tribes. Working with cumbersome cameras in remote wilderness, he produced tens of thousands of images and recordings, sacrificing his health, fortune, and family to his vision. Egan brings Curtis vividly to life: a flawed, driven genius whose work preserved an irreplaceable record of American history.
Why This Book Belongs on Your Shelf
Riveting, beautifully written, and deeply humane, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher is essential reading for lovers of photography, American history, and great biography. The epic tale of an American original who chased his dream into the shadows.
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